


Priorities

by RapidashPatronus



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: F/M, Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy, and i really have no idea what I'm doing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 20:26:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10974750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RapidashPatronus/pseuds/RapidashPatronus
Summary: Jyn didn't think it was possible, and nothing has frightened her more in her life.





	Priorities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CasandAngel4ever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasandAngel4ever/gifts).



They had the conversation a long time ago. Jyn remembered the faint ring in her ears, the sense of sense returning, the sound of his breathing beside her becoming even again, his fingers tracing through the dew on her shoulder. It was a familiarity that was still somehow novel, and she remembered believing that, like this, they could almost light up the dark.

Then his hand had moved from her shoulder; he'd shifted, and propped himself up on one arm, and when she'd turned to meet his eyes, she noticed that the ghost of light the room still held landed sharply on him. It shaded anxiety across the line of his mouth like a black cord.

“Jyn,” he began, a little breathless, a little low. “I need you to know. If I have to choose - if it comes to it and I ever have to choose -”

She'd reached up to him and brought that shadowed mouth down to hers, kissing the light back into it with “I know,” just once, and it had seemed enough for him. He’d fallen back onto his side and wrapped a warm arm over her.

It was awkwardly timed, and clumsily said, and in both these respects so unlike Cassian that she realised he had been trying to say it for perhaps almost as long as she had expected to hear it.

And, if it came to it - Cassian or the cause - she'd do the same. Perhaps he knew. But she'd be doing it for him. Perhaps he knew.

His hand on the small of her back drew her in. Heartbeat to heartbeat, sturdy and steady, she kissed the sweat from his throat and felt her arm across him lift and sink with his sigh.

This was good. For however long they had it, it was good.

\--

It wasn't that time, or the next, or any of the close, tender nights for many months that followed. When, perhaps, though, was unimportant. The fact was that she'd assumed it impossible, after the ruination of her body by her father’s luminous star.

But in conversation one day she had swayed and fallen, and she had blamed the heat - the heat! Here! - and shortly afterward had warned Cassian away from the food she'd had, because it tasted wrong, and sure enough she fled a briefing to be sick in the nearest fresher.

It happened four times over the following days, Cassian’s gaze on her ever more troubled and fearful. Finally, one of the engineers – she couldn’t even remember the woman’s name – followed her to the fresher, found with one hand on the wall as she stared, clammy and spent, into nothingness, and suggested the impossible cause of her illness.

And it _was_ impossible, it _was_. It had to be.

It had to be.

The engineer was kind, and quiet. She discreetly helped her to the medbay. She even, to Jyn’s horror, offered to wait. Not that there was any need. It was just a virus, or –

It had to be.

\--

She was sitting on the edge of their bed, staring at her hands, when Cassian came in. She looked up at him, eyes wild and wet, and his step faltered, fear written deep into the lines on his face.

“Jyn?”

She opened her mouth with a shake of her head, but no words would come out – the tears simply began anew.

It was superhuman, the speed with which he closed the distance, his bag hitting the floor as he flew to her, crackling with electric terror.

“I can’t –” she gasped as he knelt in front of her. “I can’t –”

His hands were tight on her arms, and when she finally met his eyes, they were glassy, beseeching.

“Jyn…”

She doubled over, her words dissolving into a moan on his shoulder, and felt his hand on the back of her head, stroking her hair, shaking with alarm.

“Jyn… Jyn…”

“I can’t do this, Cassian,” she managed at last, a lowing sob.

He didn’t let go of her, and she fought on.

“I can’t… I can’t have a baby...”

The gasp by her ear was like a world ripping, his grip on her arm as painful as daylight. Even as she sank back into him, rocking and moaning, his shocked stillness impressed itself on her and tore her with guilt. She hadn’t meant to tell him now, to tell him like this, to tell him at all, but there was no holding back the panic and misery that dragged her under like a tide, and she needed him near, and real, and stable in the storm.

It might have been a minute or an hour, for all she knew, but he found himself, and he pulled her to the floor beside him, holding her as tightly as he could, and muttering hoarsely into her neck that whatever she wanted, whatever she wanted –

\--

It would be complicated, the human medic said. There was damage to the system, and if she carried to term, they’d have to intervene at some point, if events made it that far. _If events make it that far_ , he said. Just like that. Cassian tightened his hold on her hand and turned to her.

“I’m sure,” she said. Fear and defiance reacted and glowed inside her just like when he’d seen her first, and to him she was even more beautiful for it.

He didn’t know how to be a father. He barely remembered his own. She, he knew, had no better guide. And they had learned to fight with something to lose, but could they risk being the loss? He knew that loss. And the galaxy was shredded by a war of their own extending, home nothing but an echoing warren of glistening blue ice, and nothing to promise but change, perhaps for better, perhaps for worse, but change, always change, and loss. And maybe something new.

Maybe something new. And so she had decided, and he had simply said, “whatever you want”, and here she was beside him, nervous but brilliant with resolve. He thought she could almost light up the dark.

 

\--

 

It was hours. It could have been days. Cassian sat, or stood, or walked, and pushed his hand back and forth across his mouth, and thought he might be sick. _If events make it that far._ It kept coming back to him, even now. What if he lost her?

“Captain.”

He span around, vision clouding black at the edges as he felt his blood drain away, but the droid angled its head and beckoned him in.

He swallowed, followed.

And he could never have been prepared for the moment. He could have been offered his whole life fresh over and he would have waved it away. He’d never seen anything more beautiful: Jyn, flushed and exhausted and joyful, and this – this tiny morass of wires and tubes and – and _person_ , that she held… he’d never made a single good thing in his life till now. He hardly dared come nearer, but her smile at him felt like gravity.

He crouched down beside the bed. “It’s a -?”

“A boy,” she murmured. “Until further notice.” Then she laughed. “They’re saying he’s got my eyes. I think I’m insulted.”

Cassian laughed, too, and cried, and kissed her perfect, beautiful mouth.

After a long time of sitting in wonderment, he turned to her.

“Jyn… I need you to know…”

“I know.”

It was a strange and wonderful thing, having new priorities.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for straying a little from the brief - the request was "a little baby boy" and this focuses rather more on Jyn and Cassian than on the new arrival. But... honestly... the very real reason for this fact is that babies (and tbh pregnancy as well) are A Major Squick For Me - *shudders* - so this was verrrrry hard to write because I Cannot Relate.  
> BUT!! Ask and you shall receive! And I hope you liked it :)


End file.
